 Her Land by Charlotte Perkins Stetson-Gillman. First Chapter Collection 6. This is written from memory, unfortunately. If I could have brought with me the material I so carefully prepared, this would be a very different story, whole books full of notes, carefully copied records, first-hand descriptions, and the pictures—that's the worst loss. We had some birds' eyes of the cities and parks, a lot of lovely views of streets of buildings outside and in, and some of those gorgeous gardens, and most important of all, of the women themselves. Nobody will ever believe how they looked. Descriptions aren't good when it comes to women, and I never was good at descriptions anyhow. But it's got to be done somehow. The rest of the world needs to know about that country. I haven't said where it was, for fearsome self-appointed missionaries, or traders, or land-greedy expansionists will take it upon themselves to push in. They will not be wanted, I can tell them that, and will fare worse than we did if they do find it. It began this way. There were three of us, classmates and friends—Terry O. Nicholson, we used to call him the old Nick with good reason. Jeff Margrave and I Van Dyke Jennings. We had known each other years and years, and in spite of our differences we had a good deal in common. All of us were interested in science. Terry was rich enough to do as he pleased. His great aim was exploration. He used to make all kinds of a row because there was nothing left to explore now, only patchwork and filling in, he said. He filled in well enough. He had a lot of talents, great on mechanics and electricity, had all kinds of boats and motor-cars, and was one of the best of our airmen. We never could have done the thing at all without Terry. Jeff Margrave was born to be a poet, a botanist, or both, but his folks persuaded him to be a doctor instead. He was a good one for his age, but his real interest was in what he loved to call the wonders of science. As for me, sociology is my major. You have to back that up with a lot of other sciences, of course. I'm interested in them all. Terry was strong on facts—geography and meteorology and those. Jeff could beat him any time on biology. And I didn't care what it was they talked about so long as it connected with human life somehow. There are a few things that don't. We three had a chance to join a big scientific expedition. They needed a doctor, and that gave Jeff an excuse for dropping his just-opening practice. They needed Terry's experience, his machine and his money. And as for me, I got in through Terry's influence. The expedition was up among the thousand tributaries and enormous hinterland of a great river. Up where the maps had to be made, savage dialects studied, and all manner of strange flora and fauna expected. But this story is not about that expedition. That was only the nearest starter for hours. My interest was first roused by talk-among-hour guides. I'm quick at languages, know a good many, and pick them up readily. What with that, and a really good interpreter we took with us, I made out quite a few legends and folk myths of these scattered tribes. And as we got farther and farther upstream, in a dark tangle of rivers, lakes, morasses and dense forests, with here and there an unexpected long spur running out from the big mountains beyond, I noticed that more and more of these savages had a story about a strange and terrible woman land in the high distance. Up yonder, over there, way up was all the direction they could offer. But their legends all agreed on the main point, that there was this strange country where no men lived, only women and girl children. None of them had ever seen it. It was dangerous, deadly, they said, for any man to go there. But there were tales of long ago when some brave investigator had seen it. A big country, big houses, plenty people, all women. Had no one else gone? Yes, a good many. But they never came back. It was no place for men, of that they seemed sure. I told the boys about these stories and they laughed at them. Naturally I did myself. I knew the stuff that savage dreams are made of. But when we had reached our farthest point, just the day before we all had to turn around and start for home again, as the best of expeditions must in time, we three made a discovery. The main encampment was on a spit of land running out into the main stream, or what we thought was the main stream. It had the same muddy color we had been seeing for weeks past, the same taste. I happened to speak of that river to our last guide, a rather superior fellow with quick bright eyes. He told me that there was another river. Over there. Short river, sweet water, red and blue. I was interested in this and anxious to see if I had understood, so I showed him a red and blue pencil I carried, and asked again. Yes, he pointed to the river and then to the southwestward, river, good water, red and blue. Terry was close by and interested in the fellow's pointing. What does he say, Van? I told him. Terry blazed up at once. Ask him how far it is. The man indicated a short journey. I judged about two hours, maybe three. Let's go, urge Terry, just us three. Maybe we can really find something. Maybe Cinnabar in it. Maybe Indigo Jeff suggested with his lazy smile. It was early yet. We had just breakfasted. And leaving word that we'd be back before night, we got away quietly, not wishing to be thought too gullible if we failed, and secretly hoping to have some nice little discovery all two hours' selves. It was a long two hours, nearer three. I fancy the savage could have done it alone much quicker. There was a desperate tangle of wood and water and a swampy patch we never should have found our way across alone. There was one, and I could see Terry, with compass and notebook, marking directions and trying to place landmarks. We came after a while to a sort of marshy lake, very big, so that the circling forest looked quite low and dim across it. Our guide told us that boats could go from there to our camp, but long way, all day. This water was somewhat clearer than that we had left, but we could not judge well from the margin. We skirted it for another half hour or so, the ground growing firmer as we advanced, and presently we turned the corner of a wooded promontory and saw a quite different country. A sudden view of mountains, steep and bare. One of those long, easterly spurs, Terry said appraisingly. Maybe hundreds of miles from the range. They crop out like that. Suddenly we left the lake and struck directly toward the cliffs. We heard running water before we reached it, and the guide pointed proudly to his river. It was short. We could see where it poured down a narrow vertical cataract from an opening in the face of the cliff. It was sweet water. The guide drank eagerly and so did we. That's snow water, Terry announced. Must come from way back in the hills. But as to being red and blue, it was greenish in tint. The guide seemed not at all surprised. He hunted about a little and showed us a quiet marginal pool where there were smears of red along the border, yes and of blue. Terry got out his magnifying glass and squatted down to investigate. Chemicals of some sort I can't tell on the spot. Look to me like dice-stuffs. Let's get nearer, he urged, up there by the fall. We scrambled along the steep banks and got close to the pool that foamed and boiled beneath the falling water. Here we searched the border and found traces of color beyond dispute. More, Jeff suddenly held up an unlooked-for trophy. It was only a rag, a long, ravelled fragment of cloth. But it was a well-woven fabric, with a pattern, and of a clear scarlet that the water had not faded. No savage tribe that we had heard of made such fabrics. The guide stood serenely on the bank, well-pleased with our excitement. One day blue, one day red, one day green, he told us, and pulled from his pouch another strip of bright, huge cloth. Come down, he said, pointing to the cataract, woman-country up there. Then we were interested. We had our rest and lunch right there and pumped the man for further information. He could tell us only what the others had. A land of women, no men, babies but all girls, no place for men, dangerous. Some had gone to sea, none had come back. I could see Terry's jaw set at bat. No place for men, dangerous? He looked as if he might shin up the waterfall on the spot. But the guide would not hear of going up, even if there had been any possible method of scaling that sheer cliff. And we had to get back to our party before night. They might stay if we told them I suggested, but Terry stopped in his tracks. Look here, fellows, he said, this is our find. Let's not tell those cocky old professors. Let's go on home with them and then come back, just us. Have a little expedition of our own. We looked at him much impressed. It was something attractive to a bunch of unattached young men in finding an undiscovered country of a strictly Amazonian nature. Of course we didn't believe the story, but yet. There is no such cloth made by any of these local tribes I announced examining those rags with great care. Somewhere up yonder they spin and weave and die as well as we do. That would mean a considerable civilization, Van. There couldn't be such a place and not known about. Oh, well, I don't know. What's that old republic up in the Pyrenees somewhere? Andora? Precious few people know anything about that. And it's been mining its own business for a thousand years. Then there's Montenegro, splendid little state. You could lose a dozen Montenegros up and down these great ranges. We discussed it hotly all the way back to camp. We discussed it with care and privacy on the voyage home. We discussed it after that, still only among ourselves, while Terry was making his arrangements. He was hot about it. Lucky he had so much money. We might have had to beg and advertise for years to start the thing. And then it would have been a matter of public amusement, just sport for the papers. But T.O. Nicholson could fix up his big steam yacht, load his specially made big motorboat aboard, and tuck in a disassembled biplane without any more notice than a snip in the society column. We had provisions and preventives in all manner of supplies. His previous experience stood him in good stead there. It was a very comfortable little outfit. We were to leave the yacht at the nearest safe port and go up that endless river in our motorboat, just the three of us and a pilot. Then drop the pilot when we got to that last stopping place of the previous party and hunt up that clear water stream ourselves. The motorboat we were going to leave at anchor in that wide shallow lake. It had a special covering of fitted armor, thin but strong. Set up like a clamshell. Those natives can't get into it or hurt it or move it, Terri explained proudly. We'll start our flyer from the lake and leave the boat as a base to come back to. If we come back, I suggested cheerfully. Afraid the ladies will eat you, he scoffed. We're not so sure about those ladies, you know, drawl, Jeff. There may be a contingent of gentlemen with poisoned arrows or something. You don't need to go, if you don't want to, Terri remarked dryly. Go! You'll have to get an injunction to stop me. Both Jeff and I were sure about that, but we did have differences of opinion all the long way. An ocean voyage is an excellent time for discussion. Now we had no eavesdroppers. We could lull and loaf in our deck-chairs and talk and talk. There was nothing else to do. Our absolute lack of facts only made the field of discussion wider. We'll leave papers with our consul where the yacht stays, Terri planned. If we don't come back and say a month, they can send a relief party after us. A punitive expedition, I urged. If the ladies do eat us, we must make reprisals. They can locate that last stopping-place easy enough, and I've made a sort of a chart of that lake and cliff and waterfall. Yes, but how will they get up, asked Jeff. Same way we do, of course. If three valuable American citizens are lost up there, they will follow somehow, to say nothing of the glittering attractions of that fair land. Let's call it Feminesia, he broke off. You're right, Terri. Once the story gets out, the river will crawl with expeditions, and the airships rise like a swarm of mosquito-hose I laughed as I thought of it. We've made a great mistake not to let Mr. Yellow press in on this. Save us what headlines! Not much, said Terri grimly. This is our party. We're going to find that place alone. What are you going to do with it when you do find it? If you do, Jeff asked mildly. Jeff was a tender soul. I think he thought that country, if there was one, was just blossoming with roses and babies and canaries and tidies and all that sort of thing. And Terri, in his secret heart, had visions of a sort of sublimated summer resort, just girls and girls and girls, and that he was going to be, well, Terri was popular among women, even when there were other men around, and it's not to be wondered at that he had pleasant dreams of what might happen. I could see it in his eyes as he lay there, looking at the long blue rollers slipping by, and fingering that impressive mustache of his. But I thought then that I could form a far clearer idea of what was before us than either of them. You're all off, boys, I insisted. If there is such a place, and there does seem to be some foundation for believing it, you'll find it's built on a sort of matriarchal principle, that's all. The men have a separate cult of their own, less socially developed than the women, and make them an annual visit, a sort of a wedding call. This is a condition known to have existed. Here's just a survival. They've got some peculiarly isolated valley or table-land up there, and their primeval customs have survived. That's all there is to it. How about the boys, Jeff asked? Oh, the men take them away as soon as they are five or six, you see. And how about this danger theory all our guides were so sure of? Danger enough, Terry, and we'll have to be mighty careful. Women of that stage of culture are quite able to defend themselves, and have no welcome for unseasonable visitors. We talked and talked, and with all my heirs of sociological superiority, I was no nearer than any of them. It was funny, though, in the light of what we did find, those extremely clear ideas of ours as to what a country of women would be like. It was no use to tell ourselves in one another that all this was idle speculation. We were idle, and we did speculate on the ocean voyage and the river voyage, too. Admitting the improbability, we'd begin solemnly, and then launch out again. They would fight among themselves, Terry insisted. Women always do. We mustn't look to find any sort of order and organization. You're dead wrong, Jeff told him. It will be like a nunnery under an abyss, a peaceful, harmonious sisterhood. I snorted to reason at this idea, nuns, indeed. Your peaceful sisterhoods were all celibate, Jeff, and under vows of obedience. These are just women and mothers. And where there's motherhood, you don't find sisterhood. Not much. No, sir, they'll scrap, agreed, Terry. So we mustn't look for inventions and progress. It'll be awfully primitive. How about that cloth mill, Jeff suggested? Oh, cloth. Women have always been spinsters. But there they stop. You'll see. We joked Terry about his modest impression that he would be warmly received, but he held his ground. You'll see, he insisted. I'll get solid with them all, and play one bunch against another. But I'll get myself elected king in no time. Whew! Solomon will have to take a back seat. Where do we come in on that deal, I demanded? Aren't we viziers or anything? Couldn't risk it, he asserted, solemnly. You might start a revolution. Probably would. No, you'll have to be beheaded or boastrung or whatever the popular method of execution is. You'd have to do it yourself, remember, grinned Jeff. No husky black slaves and mamalooks. And there'd be two of us and only one of you, eh, Van? Jeff's ideas and Terry's were so far apart that sometimes it was all I could do to keep the peace between them. Jeff idealized women in the best southern style. He was full of chivalry and sentiment and all that. And he was a good boy. He lived up to his ideals. You might say Terry did, too. If you can call his views about women anything so polite as ideals. I always liked Terry. He was a man's man, very much so, generous and brave and clever. But I don't think any of us in college days was quite pleased to have him with our sisters. We weren't very stringent, heavens know. But Terry was the limit. Later on, why, of course, a man's life is his own, we held, and asked no questions. But barring a possible exception in favor of a not-impossible wife or of his mother, or of course the fair relatives of his friends, Terry's idea seemed to be that pretty women were just so much game, and homely ones not worth considering. It was really unpleasant sometimes to see the notions he had. But I got out of patience with Jeff, too. He had such rose-colored halos on his women folks. I held a middle ground, highly scientific, of course, and used to argue learnedly about the physiological limitations of the sex. We were not in the least advanced on the woman question. Any of us, then. So we joked and disputed and speculated, and after an interminable journey we got to our old camping place at last. It was not hard to find the river just poking along that side till we came to it, as it was navigable as far as the lake. When we reached that and slid out on its broad, glistening bosom, with that high, gray promontory running out toward us, and the straight white fall clearly visible, it began to be really exciting. There was some talk, even then, of skirting the rock wall and seeking a possible footway up, but the marshy jungle made that method look not only difficult but dangerous. Terry dismissed the plan sharply. Nonsense, fellows. We've decided that. It might take months. We haven't got the provisions. No, sir, we've got to take our chances. If we get back safe? All right. If we don't? Why, we're not the first explorers to get lost in the shuffle. There are plenty to come after us. So we got the big biplane together and loaded it with our scientifically compressed baggage. The camera, of course, the glasses, the supply of concentrated food. Our pockets were magazines of small necessities. And we had our guns, of course. There was no knowing what might happen. Up and up and up we sailed way up at first to get the lay of the land and make note of it. Out of that dark green sea of crowding forest, this high-standing spur rose steeply. It ran back on either side, apparently, to the far-off, white-ground peaks in the distance, themselves probably inaccessible. Let's make the first trip geographical, I suggested. Spy out the land and drop back here for more gasoline. With your tremendous speed we can reach that range and back all right. Then we can leave a sort of map on board for that relief expedition. There's sense in that, Terry agreed. I'll put off being king of Lady Land for one more day. So we made a long, skirting voyage, turned the point of the Cape which was close by, ran up one side of the triangle at our best speed, crossed over the base where it left the higher mountains, and so back to our lake by moonlight. That's not a bad little kingdom, we agreed, when it was roughly drawn and measured. We could tell the size fairly by our speed and from what we could see of the sides and that icy ridge at the back end. It's a pretty enterprising savage who would manage to get into it, Jeff said. Of course we had looked at the land itself. Eagerly but we were too high and going too fast to see much. It appeared to be well forested about the edges. But in the interior there were wide plains and everywhere parked like meadows and open places. There were cities, too, that I insisted. It looked, well, it looked like any other country, a civilized one, I mean. We had to sleep after that long sweep through the air, but we turned out early enough next day and again we rose softly up the height till we could top the crowning trees and see the broad fair land at our pleasure. Semi-tropical. Looks like a first-rate climate. It's wonderful what a little height will do for temperature. Terry was studying the forest growth. Little height, is that what you call little, I asked? Our instruments measured it clearly. We had not realized the long, gentle rise from the coast, perhaps. Mighty lucky piece of land I call it, Terry pursued. Now for the folks I've had enough scenery. So we sailed low, crossing back and forth, quartering the country as we went and studying it. We saw—I can't remember now how much of this we noted then and how much was supplemented by our later knowledge, but we could not help seeing this much, even on that excited day— a land in a state of perfect cultivation where even the forests looked as if they were cared for. A land that looked like an enormous park, only it was even more evidently an enormous garden. I don't see any cattle I suggested, but Terry was silent. We were approaching a village. I confess that we paid small attention to the clean, well-built roads, to the attractive architecture, to the ordered beauty of the little town. We had our glasses out. Even Terry setting his machine for a spiral glide clapped the binoculars to his eyes. They heard our whirring screw. They ran out of the houses. They gathered in from the fields, swift-running light figures, crowds of them. We stared and stared until it was almost too late to catch the levers, sweep off and rise again. And then we held our peace for a long run upward. Gosh, said Terry after a while. Only women there and children, Jeff, urged excitedly. But they look. Why, this is civilized country I protested. There must be men. Of course there are men, said Terry. Come on, let's find them. He refused to listen to Jeff's suggestion that we examine the country further before we risked leaving our machine. There's a fine landing place, right there, where we came over, he insisted. And it was an excellent one. A wide, flat-topped rock overlooking the lake and quite out of sight from the interior. They won't find this in a hurry, he asserted. As we scrambled with the utmost difficulty down to safer footing. Come on, boys, there were some good lookers in that bunch. Of course it was unwise of us. It was quite easy to see afterward that our best plan was to have studied the country more fully before we left our swooping airship and trusted ourselves to mere foot service. But we were three young men. We had been talking about this country for over a year. Hardly believing that there was such a place, and now, we were in it. It looked safe and civilized enough. And among those upturned, crowding faces, though some were terrified enough, there was great beauty. On that, we all agreed. Come on, cried Terry, pushing forward. Oh, come on, here goes for Hurland. End of Chapter 1 of Hurland. Recording by Grace Buchanan. In the Valley by Harold Frederick. First Chapter Collection 6 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Bruce Gachuk. In the Valley. The French are in the Valley. It may easily be that during the many years which have come and gone since the eventful time of my childhood, memory has played tricks upon me to the prejudice of truth. I'm indeed admonished of this by study of my son, for whose children, in turn, this tale is indicted, and who was now able to remember many incidents of his youth, chiefly beatings and like parental cruelties, which I know very well never happened at all. He is good enough to forgive me these mythical stripes and bufferings, but he nurses their memory with ostentatious and increasingly succinct recollection, whereas for my own part and for his mother's, his loving fear was lest we had spoiled him through weak fondness. By good fortune the reverse has been true. He is grown into a man of whom any parents might be proud, tall, well-featured, strong, tolerably learned, honorable, and of influence among his fellows. His affection for us, too, is very great. Yet in the fashion of this new generation, which speaks without waiting to be addressed, and does not screwful to instruct on all subjects its elders, he will have it that he feared me when allowed and with cause. If fancy can so distort impressions within such short span, it does not become me to be too set about events which come back slowly through the mist and darkness of nearly three-score years. Yet they return to me so full of colour and cut in such precision and keenness of outline that at no point can I bring myself to say, perhaps I am in error concerning this, or to ask, has this perchance been confused with other matters? Moreover, there are few now remaining who, of their own memory, could contribute or correct me, and if they essay to do so, why should not my word be at least as weighty as theirs? And so to the story. I was in my eighth year and there was snow on the ground. The day is recorded in history as November 13th, A.D. 1757. But I am afraid that I did not know much about years then and certainly the month seems now to have been one of mid-winter. The Mohawk, a larger stream than by far than in these days, was not yet frozen over, but its frothy flood ran very dark and chill between the white banks and the muskrats and the beavers for all snug in their winter holes. Although no big fragments of ice floated on the current, there had already been a prodigious scattering of the bateau and canoes which through all the open season made a thriving thoroughfare of the river. This meant that the trading was over and that the trappers and hunters, white and red, were either getting ready to go or had gone northward into the wilderness where might be had during the winter the skins of dangerous animals, bears, wolves, catamounts, and lynx, and where moose and deer could be chased and yarded over the crust not to refer to smaller furred beasts to be taken in traps. I was not at all saddened by the departure of these rude, foul men of whom those of Caucasian race were not always the least savage, for they did not fail to lay hands upon traps or nets left by the heedless within their reach and even were not beyond making off with their boats, cursing and beating children who came unprotected in their path and putting the women in terror of their very lives. The cold weather was welcome not only for clearing us of these pests but for driving off the black flies, mosquitoes, and gnats which at that time with the great forests so close behind us often rendered existence a burden, particularly just after rains. Other changes were less grateful to the mind. It was true I would no longer be held near the house by the task of keeping alight the smoking kettles of dried fungus designed to ward off the insects but at the same time had disappeared many of the enticements which in summer often made this duty irksome. The partridges were almost the sole birds remaining in the bleak woods and much as their curious ways of hiding in the snow and the resounding thunder of their strange drumming mystified and attracted me I was not alert enough to catch them. All my devices of horsehair and deer-height snares were foolishness in their sharp eyes. The waterfowl too, the geese, ducks, cranes, pokes, fish-hawks, and others had flown, sometimes darkening the sky over our clearing by the density of their flocks and filling the air with clamour. The owls indeed remained but I hated them. The very night before the day of which I speak I was awakened by one of these stupid perverse birds which must have been in the cedars on the knoll close behind the house and which disturbed my very soul by his ceaseless and melancholy hooting. For some reason it affected me more than commonly and I lay for a long time nearly on the point of tears with vexation and it is likely some of that terror with which uncanny noises inspire children in the darkness. I was warm enough under my fox-robe, snuggled into the husks, but I was very wretched. I could hear between the intervals of the owls' sinister cries the distant yelping of the timber-wolves, first from the Skohari side of the river and then from our own woods. Once there rose awfully near the log-wall against which I nestled, a panther's shrill scream, followed by a long silence, as if the lesser wild things outside shared for the time my fright. I remember that I held my breath. It was during this hush and while I lay striving, for a little fellow, to dispel my alarm by fixing my thoughts resolutely on a rabbit-trap I had set under some running hemlock out on the side hill, that there rose the noise of a horse being ridden swiftly down the frosty highway outside. The hoof-beats came pounding up close to our gate. A moment later there was a great hammering on the oak door, as with a cudgel or a pistol-handle, and I heard a voice call out in German, its echoes ring still in my old ears. The French are in the belly! I drew my head down under the fox-skin as if it had been smitten sharply and quaked in solitude. I desired to hear no more. Although so very young a boy, I knew quite well who the French were and what their visitations portended. Even at that age one has recollections. I could recall my father, peaceful man of God though he was, taking down his gun some years before, at the rumor of a French approach, and my mother clinging to his coat as he stood in the doorway, successfully pleading with him not to go forth. I had more than once seen Mrs. Markell of Minden with her black-knit cap worn to conceal the absence of her scalp, which had been taken only the previous summer by the Indians, who sold it to the French for ten-leaver, along with the scalps of her murdered husband and babe. So it seemed that adults sometimes parted with this portion of their heads without losing also their lives. I wondered if small boys were ever equally fortunate. I felt softly of my hair and wet. How the crowding thoughts of that dismal hour returned to me. I recall considering in my mind the idea of bequeathing my tame squirrel to Hendrik Getman and the works of an old clock with their delightful mystery of wooden cogs and turned wheels, which was my chief treasure, to my negro friend, Tulp, and then reflecting that they too would share my fate and would thus be precluded from enjoying my legacies. The whimsical aspect of the task of getting hold upon Tulp's close, woolly scalp was momentarily apparent to me, but I did not laugh. Instead the very suggestion of humor converted my tears into vehement sobbing. When at last I ventured to lift my head and listen again, it was to hear another voice, an English-speaking voice which I knew very well, saying gravely from within the door, it is well to warn but not to terrify. There are many leagues between us and danger and many good-fighting men. When you have told your tidings to Sir William that I have heard it all and have gone back to bed, then the door was closed and barred and the hoofbeats died away down the valley. These few words had suffice to shame me heartily of my cowardice. I ought to have remembered that we were almost within hail of Fort Johnson and its great-owner the General, that there was a long line of forts between us and the usual point of invasion with many soldiers and, most important of all, that I was in the house of Mr. Stewart. If these seem over-mature reflections from one of my age, it should be explained that, while a veritable child in matters of heart and impulse, I was in education and association much advanced beyond my years. The master of the house, Mr. Thomas Stewart, whose kind favour had provided me with a home after my father's sad demise, had diverted his leisure with my instruction and given me the great advantage of daily conversation, both in English and Dutch, with him. I was known to Sir William and to Mr. Butler and other gentlemen and was often privileged to listen when they conversed with Mr. Stewart. Thus I had grown wise in certain respects while remaining extremely childish in others. Thus it was that I trembled first at the common hooting of an owl and then cried as if to die at hearing the French were coming and lastly recovered all my spirits at the reassuring sound of Mr. Stewart's voice and the knowledge that he was content to return to his sleep. I went soundly to sleep myself presently and cannot remember to have dreamed at all. End of Chapter 1 of In the Valley The Life and Letters of Hamilton W. Mabey by Edwin W. Morse First Chapter Collection 6 This is a LibriVox recording. A LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Betty B. The Life and Letters of Hamilton W. Mabey Chapter 1 Ancestry, Boyhood and Youth The story of the life of Hamilton W. Mabey is of public interest and importance for two principal reasons. In the first place, his influence as an educational force through his writings and his lectures was vastly greater than most people were aware of. This influence was nationwide in extent and was powerful in effect, especially upon the young people of his generation. Through his contributions for nearly 40 years to the Christian Union and the outlook, through his books and through his addresses before popular audiences on literary subjects, he was always a torchbearer on the difficult path leading to high ideals, attainable only through intellectual enrichment and spiritual enlightenment. His followers, who gained courage and inspiration from his words, were numbered by the thousands, and their debt to him was great. As a public-spirited citizen, too, his activities outside of his professional work were of high value to various communities so that it may be truly said of him in the sense that the phrase can be applied to few men that he left his mark upon his time. In the second place, only a man of exceptional character and of unusual personality could have accomplished what he did. His character, his standards, his ideals are known to all men. Of his rare personality, however, less is generally known, for a man's books do not tell the whole story, do not reveal the full portrait. For these more intimate traits one must look elsewhere to those who knew him and to his letters, to his friends. Of the things we do, said maybe on one occasion, if they are memorable, there are sometimes enduring tokens, but of what we are there are no records save the memory that lies in the hearts of our friends and the influence that passing into other natures loses itself in their larger growth. It is doubtful if any man of his generation, save Theodore Roosevelt, had a greater number of devoted friends than Hamilton maybe, and the memory that he has left in the hearts of those friends will always be cherished. To them he brought a nature of such simplicity, frankness, charm and cheerfulness and a spirit of such buoyant helpfulness and hopefulness that all those who came under their spell derived from him new vigor and fresh courage with which to take up their daily tasks, however burdensome they might be. He has gone from our earth, wrote his old friend Mr. House, but he has left in each of us the consciousness of an abiding presence, serene and fine and true, which we know for the soul of Hamilton W. Maybe. No man could hope to leave in the hearts of his friends a richer or a more enduring memory than is suggested in these words. Hamilton W. Maybe was born on December 13, 1845 in Cold Spring, a village on the east bank of the Hudson River opposite Cornwall. The plateau of West Point to the south, the huge bulk of Storm King across the Hudson and the broad reaches of the river towards Newburgh gave the neighborhood natural picturesqueness and historical interest. The boy came of mixed stock, Huguenot on his father's side and Scotch English on his mother's, a combination that throws an interesting sidelight upon the development of his character and upon the peculiarities of his temperament. The founder of the family in America was Sergeant Gaspard Mable, whose father, Siegfried Pierre Mable, had been obliged to flee from the village of Nevy in the old province of Olju, whereas the states were situated after the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day in 1572. Gaspard, who had been named for the Huguenot leader Admiral Gaspard de Colligny, arrived in New Amsterdam from Holland about the middle of the 17th century. After a generation or two, the spelling of the name was made to conform to the usual pronunciation, Maybe. In course of time members of the family left New York as the city had then become and settled among their compatriots of French Protestant descent in New Rochelle. From New Rochelle, Peter Maybe, Hamilton's great-grandfather, went, went a boy with his father's family to the village of Carmel in what is now Putnam County, New York, where he grew into manhood and where he acquired a farm of more than a hundred acres on the shores of Lake Mahopak, not more than a dozen miles or so east of Colespring. He served in the Revolution, his regiment being active in the guerrilla warfare in western Connecticut. The alluring prospects which the West held out to settlers in those days finally made Peter Maybe discontented with his lot at Carmel and with several of his sons he made his way by slow stages to what later became northern Illinois. The second of these sons, Libius, finding pioneer life in the far west less to his liking than farming in the neighborhood of the home that he had left in Carmel returned to the east. Levi Jeremiah, Hamilton Maybe's father, was the second of seven children who were born to Libius Maybe and his wife, Carmel being his birthplace. Hamilton's mother was also born in Carmel. Her maiden name was Sarah Colwell and she was the daughter, one of seven children of Samuel Colwell, of a wealthy Tory family of New York City and his wife Charlotte Wright Colwell. On his mother's side, Hamilton represented the fourth generation in descent from Mercer Hamilton, a younger brother of Sir William Hamilton. Both Mercer and his elder brother were educated at the University of Edinburgh. Efforts were made by the family to induce the younger of the two to enter the church and his ecclesiastical career had no attractions for him. His eyes were already directed towards the new world where certainly adventure and perhaps opportunity awaited him. His father's second marriage and his unhappiness under the new family conditions finally gave him the excuse which he desired to run away from home and to sail to America. Reaching America, Mercer Hamilton fell a victim to the wiles of a pretty widow, Mrs. Belden, and in due course of time one of their four daughters married a man named Wright, the couple making their home near Carmel. To Charlotte Wright, Hamilton's maternal grandmother who married Samuel Colwell was one of their children. Mrs. Colwell's husband was a patriot and was estranged from his royalist relatives in New York City. Charlotte Colwell had a brother, Mercer Hamilton Wright, married his home in his maturity in New Orleans. He was the favorite uncle of Hamilton's mother and when her firstborn came she gave him the name of this uncle dropping the Mercer and calling him Hamilton Wright, Maybe. Her marriage to Levi Maybe had taken place in the Colwell Homestead not far from the village of Carmel on January 22, 1845. The bride being in her 22nd and the groom in his 24th year. Levi Maybe immediately took his bride to Cold Spring where he had been living for some time and where they made their home. The opportunities in Carmel were too few for a man of ambition and energy like Levi Maybe, who as appeared later had the latent capacity for business affairs on a large scale. His removal from Carmel to Cold Spring was undoubtedly inspired by a desire to get nearer the current of traffic that flowed up and down the Hudson between New York and Buffalo by way of the river and of the recently completed Erie Canal in order to take advantage of whatever opportunity, chance, or industry might bring him. He remained in Cold Spring only a few years a period during which he watched with interest the efforts that were making to complete the railway line between New York and Albany. It is a tradition in the family that he was of an inventive turn of mind and that he supplied several valuable suggestions for the solution of problems that were puzzling the engineers in charge of the railway work. It is easy to imagine that his little son, Hamilton, then three or four years old, may have accompanied his father on some of these excursions and stood with wide-eyed wonder and curiosity during these mysterious proceedings. The railway was not open for traffic between New York and Albany until 1851. A year or so before this date, Levi Maybe and his family had moved from Cold Spring to Buffalo, where they remained nine years living for a part of this time in Washington Street and later near Johnson Park. A baby sister, Jenny, was one member of the family to make this journey and during their sojourn in Buffalo, two more children, both sons, were born to Levi Maybe and his wife, Frank Marvin in 1854 and Edgar Washburn in 1858. Hamilton maybe left no record of his recollections of these years of his boyhood and youth, such as at least one of his contemporaries in the literary world, T. B. Aldrich, left. In later years, he was too much interested in the problems which the present offered and the future foreshadowed to give any time to his own past. Although in a general way, he was proud of his Huguenot blood and was especially pleased when he was elected an honorary member of the Huguenot Society of America, he was on the whole indifferent to the details of his ancestry. Our chief concern, he said in one of his early papers, is to know ourselves, not our forebears. This was his attitude throughout his life. The consequence is that the main source of information regarding these early years is the family tradition as it has been preserved by his surviving sister, Mrs. Champney H. Judson of Dobbs Ferry. According to Mrs. Judson, as soon as Hamilton reached the proper age, he was sent to the public schools in Buffalo, where he developed into a studious and apt pupil. His mother was a woman of a sweet, gentle and lovable nature, and his interests were all centered in her young family. From her, the boy derived similar traits which later endeared him to a large circle of devoted friends. She was a woman too of decided strength of character, which she also bequeathed to her son and believed in the old-fashioned doctrine as to the proper relation between the rod and the willful child. Young Hamilton must occasionally have wandered outside the bounds which parental discipline set for him or it is remembered in the family that he much preferred punishment which was no doubt mild by his mother to a moral lecture on his delinquencies by his father. One of his escapades had a curious sequel. In company with another boy, he stayed away from school one day, making the freight cars and railway tracks his playground. The next morning, having no excuse to give his teacher for his previous day's absence, he found it easier to lose himself in the freight yards again than to present himself at school. This went on for a full week, the problem becoming more difficult of solution each day until the boy was at last fairly overwhelmed by the consciousness that he had placed himself entirely outside the social order to which he was accustomed and to which everyone else conformed and that he knew of no way in which he could recover his lost standing. A note of inquiry from his teacher to his parents brought matters to a crisis. The youth took his punishment with a great sense of relief and went back to school. He never however forgot the lesson which that experience taught him. Levi maybe was a man of rigid probity and of high standards of conduct both in his business dealings and in his private life and he required all the members of his family to inform to these standards. There was nothing hard however in his character or harsh or even severe in his manner. On the contrary, he was always helpful and considerate, charitable in both thought and deed. His control over his family was one of sweet reasonableness and his influence had a decided effect upon the character of his son Hamilton. Deeply religious by nature he attended the Dutch Reformed Church regularly and conducted family prayers daily. At this period from about 1850 to 1858 Buffalo was a rapidly growing city of great commercial activity through the lake and canal traffic. Levi maybe was engaged during these years in one of the principal industries of the city, the wholesale lumber business. As the greater part of this lumber came from Canada numerous opportunities presented themselves in revenue frauds. On one occasion Mr. Maybe's partner who had been in Canada buying lumber returned with the joyful news that he had perfected an arrangement by which the lumber he had purchased was to be got into New York State free of duty. Without any discussion or hesitation Mr. Maybe left word with his wife that he was to be called early the next morning and proceeding to the point on the border where the lumber was to arrive he paid the customs officials what was due on the consignment which his partner had bought. It is not difficult to understand why a sensitive boy like young Maybe should have suffered more from a lecture on personal conduct by a man of this type than from a gentle chastisement by his mother. The principal's however of right living and right thinking which the father laid down in these interviews probably sank deeper into the boy's heart than he realized at the time. A man of such uncompromising integrity as Levi Maybe may have had some difficulty in holding his own against less scrupulous business rivals. It is certain however that he was handicapped by his inability to withstand the rugged winter climate of the Lake City which compelled him to go inland to Binghamton once or twice in order to recover his health. Whatever the reason or the combination of reasons may have been he left Buffalo in 1858 after a residence there of nearly nine years and moved his family to Brooklyn. There they made their home in Putnam Avenue near Bedford Avenue where they lived until they moved to Territown. During this period Levi Maybe was engaged in the wholesale boot and shoe business at number 75 Warren Street and later in Grand Street, New York. Here again he was unfortunate in one of his partners who in the early 60s became dissipated and erratic and who saddled the firm with a large quantity of goods that could not be sold at a profit. The temptation to go into voluntary bankruptcy and thus to escape the necessity of paying the firm's debts would have caused most men at least to hesitate before deciding what policy to adopt. But Levi Maybe was made of sterner stuff. We will wind up the business, pay what we can and the balance as we can was his decision and this course was followed. The worry and anxiety however incidental to these transactions undermined his far from robust health and to his doctor's decree finally was that he must move into the country and take things easily. It was for this reason that in 1864 the family went to Territown to live. Meanwhile it had been decided that the eldest son, Hamilton, should be prepared for college. In Buffalo he had attended the public schools but some other arrangement was thought to be necessary in Brooklyn and his father's circumstances made the new arrangement possible. A neighbor of the Maybe's named Brevort who had a son Harry whom he desired to fit for college invited Hamilton and another boy Charles S. West, the son of the Reverend Jacob West to study together under an especially competent tutor and the invitation was accepted. All three boys lived near each other in or near Putnam Avenue and were of about the same age. Williams College had been selected for Hamilton. Mr. Maybe preferring to have his son go to one of the smaller New England colleges with country surroundings. The boy applied himself to his studies with such diligence and such zeal that by the summer of 1862 when he was 16 years old he was ready to take the examinations. He was thought however to be too young to be sent to college and was held back for a year. He occupied part of the time in the interval in reading law in the office of a Brooklyn attorney showing that even before he entered Williams his mind or that of his father went into the law as a possible profession for him. It is probably safe to assume that in this leisurely year young Maybe read more fiction and poetry than he did law for an evidently authoritative article about him in the Bookman for December 1895 James MacArthur wrote, when asked if he had any profession in view when he went to Williams Mr. Maybe replied, no I had no definite professional in my education I had been a great reader all my life if there is anything that I might venture to claim for myself it is that I belong to the class Lowell called the great readers I have been reading as long as I can remember as a boy I was very fond of Sir Walter Scott's novels indeed my memory begins with Walter Scott the first poet I remember reading was Longfellow End of chapter one The Life and Letters of Hamilton W. Maybe A Passage to India by E. M. Forster first chapter collection six this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or volunteer please visit LibriVox.org A Passage to India part one OSC chapter one The Mara Bar Caves and they are twenty miles off the city of Chandrapur presents nothing extraordinary edge rather than washed by the river Ganges it trails for a couple of miles along the bank scarcely distinguishable from the rubbish it deposits so freely there are no bathing steps on the riverfront as the Ganges happens not to be holy here indeed there is no riverfront and bazaars shout out the wide drama of the stream the streets are mean the temples ineffective and though a few fine houses exist they are hidden away in gardens or down alleys whose filth deters all but the invited guests Chandrapur was never large or beautiful but two hundred years ago it lay on the road between upper India then imperial and the sea and the fine houses date from that period the zest for decoration stopped nor was it ever democratic there is no painting and scarcely any carving in the bazaars the very wood seems made of mud the inhabitants of mud moving so abased so monotonous is everything that meets the eye that when the Ganges comes down it might be expected to wash the excretions back into the soil houses do fall people are drowned and left rotting but the general outline of the town persists looking here, shrinking there like some low but indestructible form of life inland the prospect alters there is an oval made down and a long-sallow hospital houses belonging to Eurasian stand on the high ground by the railroad station beyond the railway which runs parallel to the river the land sinks and rises again rather steeply on the second rise is laid out the little civil station viewed hence, Chandrapour appears to be a totally different place it is a place of gardens it is no city but a forest sparsely scattered with huts it is a tropical plaisons washed by a noble river the toddy palms and neem trees and mangoes and papal that were hidden behind the bazaars now become visible and in their turn hide the bazaars they rise from the gardens where ancient tanks nourish them they burst out of stifling pearl use and unconsidered temples seeking light and air and endowed with more strength than man or his works they soar above the lower deposit to greet one another with branches and beckoning leaves and to build a city for the birds especially after the rains do they screen what passes below but at times even when scorched or leafless they glorify the city to the English people will inhabit the rise so that newcomers cannot believe it to be as meager as it is described and have to be driven down to acquire disillusionment as for the civil station itself it provokes no emotion it charms not, neither does it repel it is sensibly planned with a red brick club on its brow and farther back are grocers and a cemetery and the bungalows are disposed along roads that intersect the hills it has nothing hideous in it and only the view is beautiful shares nothing with the city except the overarching sky the sky too has its changes but they are less marked than those of the vegetation and the river clouds map it up at times but it is normally a dome of blending tints in the main tint blue by day the blue will pale down into white where it touches the white of the land the sky is a circle orange melting upwards into tender as purple but the core of blue persists and so it is by night then the stars hang like lamps from the immense vault the distance between the vault and them is as nothing to the distance behind them in that farther distance though beyond color last freed itself from blue the sky settles everything and it shall be beautiful by her she can do little only feeble outbursts of flowers but when the sky chooses glory can reign into the shan rapport bazaars or a benediction pass from horizon to horizon the sky can do this because it is so strong and so enormous strength comes from the sun infused in it daily size from the prostrate earth no mountains infringe on the curve the sky flies flat heaves a little is flat again only in the south where a group of fists and fingers are thrust up through the soil is the endless expanse interrupted these fists and fingers are the marhabar hills containing the extraordinary caves end of chapter 1 of A Passage to India Prevailing Prayer by D. L. Moody This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Larry Wilson Prevailing Prayer Chapter 1 The Prayers of the Bible Those who have left the deepest impression on this incursed earth have been men and women of prayer. You will find that prayer has been a power that has moved not only God but man. Abraham was a man of prayer and angels came down from heaven to converse with him. Jacob's prayer was answered in the wonderful interview at Penile that resulted in his having such a mighty blessing and in softening the heart of his brother Esau. The child Samuel was given in answer to Hannah's prayer. Elijah's prayer closed up again and the heavens gave rain. The Apostle James tells us that the prophet Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are. I am thankful that those men and women who were so mighty in prayer were just like ourselves. We are apt to think that those prophets and mighty men and women of old time were different from what we are. To be sure they lived in a much darker age but they were of like passions We read that on another occasion Elijah brought down fire on Mount Carmel. The prophet Sebel cried long and loud but no answer came. The God of Elijah heard and answered his prayer. Let us remember that the God of Elijah still lives. The prophet was translated and went up to heaven but his God still lives and we have the same access to him that Elijah had. We have the same warrant to go to God and ask the fire from heaven to come down and consume our lusts and passions to burn up our dross and let Christ shine through us. Elijah prayed and life came back to a dead child. Many of our children are dead in trespasses and sins. Let us do as Elijah did. Let us entreat God to raise them up in answer to our prayers. Manasseh the king was a wicked man and had done what he could against the God of his father. Yet in Babylon when he cried to God his cry was heard and he was taken out of prison and put on the throne at Jerusalem. Surely if God gave heed to the prayer of wicked Manasseh he will hear ours in the time of our distress. Is not this a time of distress with a great number of our fellow men? Are there not many among us whose hearts are burdened? As we go to the throne of grace remember that God answers prayer. Look again at Samson. He prayed and his strength came back so that he slew more at his death than during his life. He was a restored backslider and he had power with God. If those who have been backsliders will but return to God they will see how quickly God will answer prayer. Job prayed and his captivity was turned. Then God lifted him up above the height of his former prosperity in answer to prayer. Daniel prayed to God and Gabriel came to tell him that he was a man greatly beloved of God. Three times that message came to him from heaven in answer to prayer. The secrets of heaven were imparted to him and he was told that God's son was going to be cut off for the sins of his people. We find also that Cornelius prayed and Peter was sent to tell him words whereby he and his should be saved. In answer to prayer this great blessing came upon him and his household. Peter had gone up to the house top to pray in the afternoon when he had that wonderful vision of the sheet let down from heaven. It was when prayer was made without ceasing unto God for Peter that the angel was sent to deliver him. So all through the Scriptures you will find that when believing prayer went up to God the answer came down. I think it would be a very interesting study to go right through the Bible and see what has happened while God's people have been on their knees calling upon him. Certainly the study would greatly strengthen our faith, showing as it would how wonderfully God has heard and delivered when the cry has gone up to him for help. Look at Paul and Silas in the prison at Philippi. As they prayed and sang praises they were shaken and the jailer was converted. Probably that one conversion has done more than any other recorded in the Bible to bring people into the kingdom of God. How many have been blessed in seeking to answer the question what must I do to be saved? It was the prayer of those two godly men that brought the jailer to his knees and that brought blessing to him and his family. You remember how Stephen as he prayed and looked up and saw the heavens opened and the Son of Man at the right hand of God the light of heaven fell on his face so that it shone. Remember too how the face of Moses shone as he came down from the mount. He had been in communion with God. So when we get really into communion with God he lifts up his countenance upon us and instead of our having gloomy looks our faces will shine because God has heard and answered our prayers. I want to call special attention to Christ as an example for us in all things, in nothing more than in prayer. We read that Christ prayed to his father for everything. Every great crisis in his life was preceded by prayer. Let me quote a few passages. I never noticed till a few years ago that Christ was praying at his baptism. As he prayed the heaven was open and the Holy Ghost descended on him. Another great event in his life was his transfiguration. As he prayed the fashion of his countenance was altered and his raiment was white and glistening. We read again. It came to pass in those days that he went into the mountain to pray and continued all night in prayer to God. This is the only place where it is recorded that the Savior spent a whole night in prayer. What was about to take place? When he came down from the mountain he gathered his disciples around him and preached that great discourse known as the Sermon on the Mount the most wonderful sermon that has ever been preached to mortal men. Probably no sermon has done so much good and it was preceded by a night of prayer. If our sermons are going to reach the hearts and consciences of the people we must be much in prayer to God that there may be power with the word. In the Gospel of John we read that Jesus at the grave of Lazarus lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, I thank thee that thou has heard me, and I know that thou hears me always. But because of the people which stand by I said it that they may believe that thou has sent me. Notice that before he spoke the dead to life he spoke to his father. If our spiritually dead ones are to be raised we must first get power with God. The reason we so often fail in moving our fellow men is that we try to win them without first getting power with God. Jesus was in communion with his father, and so he could be assured that his prayers were heard. We read again in the 12th of John that he prayed to the father. I think this is one of the saddest chapters in the whole Bible. He was about to lead the Jewish nation and to make atonement for the sin of what he says. Now is my soul troubled and what shall I say? Father saved me from this hour, but for this cause came I unto this hour. He was almost under the shadow of the cross. The iniquities of mankind were about to be laid upon him. One of his twelve disciples was going to deny him and swear he never knew him. Another was to sell him for silver. All were to forsake him and flee. His soul was exceeding sorrowful and he prays. When his soul was troubled God spake to him. Then in the garden of Gethsemane while he prayed an angel appeared to strengthen him. In answer to his cry, Father glorify thy name. He hears a voice coming down from the glory. I have both glorified it and will pray it again. Another memorable prayer of our Lord was in the garden of Gethsemane. He was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast and kneeled down and prayed. I would draw your attention to the recorded fact that four times the answer came right down from heaven while the Saviour prayed to God. The first time was at his baptism. When the heavens were open and the spirit descended upon him in prayer on the mount of transfiguration God appeared and spoke to him. Then when the Greeks came desiring to see him the voice of God was heard responding to his call. And again when he cried to the Father in the midst of his agony a direct response was given. These things are recorded, I doubt not, that we may be encouraged to pray. We read that his disciples came to pray. It is not recorded that he taught them how to preach. I have often said that I would rather know how to pray like Daniel than to preach like Gabriel. If you get love into your soul so that the grace of God may come down in answer to prayer there will be no trouble about reaching the people. It is not by eloquent sermons that perishing souls are going to be reached. We need the power of God in order that the blessing may come down. The Lord's Prayer I think that the Lord's Prayer more properly is that in the seventeenth of John. That is the longest prayer and record that Jesus made. You can read it slowly and carefully in about four or five minutes. I think we may learn a lesson here. Our master's prayers were short when offered in public. When he was alone with God that was a different thing and he could spend the whole night in communion with his father. My experience is that those who pray most in their closets generally make short prayers in public. Long prayers are too often not prayers at all and they weary the people. How short the publican's prayer was God be merciful to me a sinner. The Syrophoenician women's was shorter still. Lord, help me. She went right to the mark and she got what she wanted. The prayer of the thief on the cross was a short one. Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. Peter's prayer was Lord, save me or I perish. So if you go through the scriptures you will find that the prayers that brought immediate answers were generally brief. Let our prayers be to the point just telling God what we want. In the prayer of our Lord in John 17 we find that he made one for himself, four for his disciples around him and two for the disciples of succeeding ages. Six times in that one prayer he repeats that God had sent him. The world looked upon him as an impostor and he wanted them to know that he was heaven sent. He speaks of the world nine times and makes mention of his disciples and those who believe on him fifty times. Christ's last prayer on the cross was a short one. Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. I believe that prayer was answered. We find that right there in front of the cross a Roman centurion was converted. It was probably in answer to the Saviour's prayer. The conversion of the thief I believe was in answer to that prayer of our blessed Lord. Saul of Tarsus may have heard it and the words may have followed him since he traveled to Damascus so that when the Lord spoke to him on the way he may have recognized the voice. One thing we do know that on the day of Pentecost some of the enemies of the Lord were converted. Surely that was in answer to the prayer. Father, forgive them. Hence we see that prayer holds a high place among the exercises of a spiritual life. All God's people have been praying for a long time in the city of Baxter. He stained his study walls with praying breath and after he was anointed with the unction of the Holy Ghost sent a river of livy water over a kiddermenster and converted hundreds. Luther and his companions were men of such mighty pleading with God that they broke the spell of ages and laid nations subdued at the foot of the cross. We'd filled after much holy, faithful closet-pleading, went to the Devil's Fair, and took more than a thousand souls out of the paw of the lion in one day. See a praying Wesleyan turn more than ten thousand souls to the Lord. Look at the praying Finney, whose prayers, faith, sermons, and writings have shaken this whole country, and sent a wave of blessing through the churches on both sides of the sea. Dr. Guthrie thus speaks of prayer and its necessity. The first true sign of spiritual life, prayer, is also the means of maintaining it. Men can as well live physically without breathing as spiritually without praying. There is a class of animals, thus estacious, neither fish nor sea-vowl, that inhabit the deep. It is their home. They never leave it for the shore. But though swimming beneath its waves and sounding its doctor's steps, they have ever an anon to rise to the surface that they may breathe the air. Without that, these monarchs of the deep could not exist in the dense elements in which they live, and move and have their being. Something like that is imposed on them by physical necessity. The Christian has to do by a spiritual one. It is by ever anon ascending up to God, by rising through prayer into a loftier, purer region for supplies of divine grace, that he maintains his spiritual life. Prevent these animals from rising to the surface, and they die for want of breath. Prevent the Christian from rising to God, and he dies for want of prayer. Give me children, cried Rachel, or else I die. Let me breathe, says a man gasping, or else I die. Let me pray, says the Christian, or else I die. Since I began, said Dr. Payson, when a student to beg God's busing on my studies, I have done more in one week than in the whole year before. Luther, when most pressed with work, said, I have so much to do, that I cannot get on without three hours a day praying. And not only do theologians think and speak highly of prayer, men of all ranks and positions in life have felt the same. No havelock rose at four o'clock, if the hour for marching was six, rather than lose the precious privilege of communion with God before setting out. Sir Matthew Hale says, if I omit praying and reading God's word in the morning, nothing goes well all day. A great part of my time, says McShane, is spent in getting my heart in tune for prayer. It is the link that connects earth with heaven. A comprehensive view of the subject will show that there are nine elements which are essential to true prayer. The first is adoration. We cannot meet God on a level at the start. We must approach Him as one far beyond our reach and sight. The next is confession. Sin must be put out of the way. We cannot have any communion with God while there is any transgression between us. If there stands some wrong you have done a man, you cannot expect that man's favor until you go to him and confess the fault. Restitution is another. We have to make good the wrong wherever possible. Thanksgiving is the next. We must be thankful for what God has done for us already. Then comes forgiveness, and then unity, and then for prayer such as these things produce, there must be faith. As influenced we shall be ready to offer direct petition. We hear a good deal of praying that is just exhorting, and if you did not see the man's eyes closed, you would suppose he was preaching, then much that is called prayer simply finding fault. There needs to be more petition in our prayers. After all these there must come submission. While praying we must be ready to accept the will of God. We shall consider these nine elements in detail, closing our inquiries by giving incidents illustrative of the assertivity of our receiving under such conditions, Answers to Prayer. End of Chapter 1 of Prevailing Prayer The Romantic Story of the Puritan Fathers in their founding of New Boston and the Massachusetts Bay Colony by Albert Christopher Addison. Chapter 1 The Mayflower Pilgrims. New places in England possess a more impressive history than Boston and Lincolnshire. The records of this ancient township go back to the middle of the 7th century, when Botolph, a Piousaxon monk, allowed to settle here by Ethelman, king of the East Angles, found in a monastery on an untold place where none dwell, named Icano, or Ox Island, a wilderness unfrequented by men. The St. Balthoff's town of later years. Towards the close of the 9th century came the invading Danes, with wasting fire and sword, and the St. Lee Balthoff and his following and the root structures they had raised were swept away. Next the Normans, whom the Saxon Fenmen were the last to resist, set up a small stone church, and this in turn made way for the present noble Edifice, commenced on the same site in 1309, and carried over and around the older church, which was not removed until the new building was completed. The story is that the foundation of St. Balthoff's church were of timber and wool packs. This in part is no doubt literally true. At the same time it is meant to express in metaphor that the trade in those commodities produced the wealth which enabled the people to erect the church. But no mere material prosperity would have inspired such a design, it was due also to the religious enthusiasm which had been aroused by the preaching of the friars. After the Norman conquest, Boston entered upon a period of growing prosperity, compared with the rest of England. There was then no surplus population to be employed in manufacture. This is practically the position of Canada and Australia today. The chief raw product of England was wool. And trade consisted in exporting wool and importing in exchange for a cloth and manufactured goods and articles of luxury. Now Lincolnshire has always been a county fame for a sheep, and Boston is a port facing toward the Netherlands, which was the great manufacturing country. At this period Boston was as Sydney now as in Ghent and Ruchus were as our Leeds in Bradford. The stream of trade flowed from the Asiatic regions at the southeast across Europe to Britain in the northwest. The great commercial sites of the world were in the center of that route, in southern Germany and northern Italy, and Boston was on the route. Thus it was that Boston in the reign of John, who lost his baggage in the neighboring wash, ranked next to London as the second port in the kingdom. But Boston's prosperity was highest from 1300 to 1450, the period during which its glorious church was building. Those were the days of the Hanseatic League, which had its steel yard and staple at Boston. Four friaries were established in the town, and the numerous mercantile guilds which sprang into existence were another evidence of its commercial growth. But there was a turn of the tide. Boston became a self-supporting country which manufactured its own raw material. Such towns as Norwich and Worsted took the place once held by the Flemish cities, and the Fenport was no longer wanted for the export of wool. While ships were made larger, its harbor was silted up. Boston was a decaying town. The success of the Moslems broke up the old overland trade route to India, and the attempt to find a new route led to the discovery of America. Instead of flowing in an easterly direction, the mainstream of trade was across the Atlantic towards the West, and Liverpool and Bristol usurped the place which Boston had once held. And so the glory of the Boston of the Middle Ages departed. The Easterlings in their league, the steel yard and the staple, were but a memory, and the friaries and the mercantile guilds went the way of the rest. Yet Boston survived the loss of its trade and of institutions associated with its medieval activity and importance. Greater things were reserved for it. Soon it was to be redeemed from the obscurity which threatened it, and to obtain a place in world history by reason of the part it played in the peopleing of New England in its share and the founding of the American states. It was in the period of the great upheaval in church and state that the Lincoln sheer Boston made its impress upon the pages of history. True in the centuries which followed, Boston benefited by the drainage of the surrounding fens and became the metropolis of a wealthy agricultural district and a center of distribution for the corn trade. Great granaries reared themselves on the banks of its river, and still more recent times it came to have docks as well as a harbor, and a better passage to the sea, and to thrive as a shipping and fishing port in the realm of modern industry. But even so its commercial position was relatively less important than that of the old days, and its title to a wider recognition had still to rest on the times when having ceased to export cargos of wool to be made into cloth and holland. It sent forth the men of Mark who made the name of the American Boston, and incidentally the fame of the English Boston. So it comes about that the history of old Boston, which endures in the eyes of men and will be handed on, is in the main that which clings to its monumental church and the men who worshipped and went out from there, and to its Puritan associations and its pilgrim fathers shrines. In a remotor sense it has claims in the same direction which are not without interest, with the cause of religious freedom from its inception onward it can boast of certain links. Sir Thomas Holland, for example, holder of the ancient manner of Estovening at Swine's Head near Boston, married the fair maid of Kent, afterwards the wife of Edward the Black Prince, and mother of Richard II, whose consort Anne of Bohemia was the mother of the Reformation in England. It was on the petition of Anne that the Guild of St. Mary at Boston, which built the Guild Hall, was incorporated. This of her action has come down to us in the carved head of the Queen commemorating it on the Miserere bracket of a stall in the church. Boston was the maternal home of Anne Boleyn, who followed Anne of Bohemia as the mother of the Reformation in England. To Boston also belonged the family of Thomas Cromwell. The accomplished and fascinating Anne Boleyn, who married Henry VIII, was daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, who had married a sister of the Duke of Norfolk. This alliance brought Sir Thomas into touch with royalty and led to the presence of his daughter at the court of Queen Catherine. The history of the unfortunate Anne is a melancholy romance. Her ancestors was that dame Marjorie Tilney, who laid the first down of Boston's steeple, the giant stump in 1309, and thereupon laid she five-pound sterling. Thomas Cromwell, the hammer of monasteries, was son of Catherine, sister of Sir Richard Cromwell, alias Williams, the founder of the house, and great-grandfather of Oliver Cromwell, the protector. Richard Cromwell was born in the parish of Lannison, and migrating to Boston held lands at Cowbridge, so named after the Cowbridge family in Glamorganshire. The Cromwells and the Bouchers were settled in the neighborhood of Boston before they went down to Huntingdon and Essex. Thomas Cromwell was a clerk in an English factory at Antwerp when he was engaged in a remarkable enterprise for renewing Pope Julius' pardons to Boston, the fact of which are attested by John Fox in his acts and monuments. Fox himself was born at Boston in 1517. He lost his father at an early age, and when a convert to the reformed doctrines, he was tried for heresy and deprived of his fellowship of Maudland College, Oxford. He was disinherited by his stepfather, Richard Melton, a Romanist. Nothing is known of his parents except that they were of respectable rank in Boston. The name occurs some half-dozen times in the local records of the second half of the 16th century, but only in one case that of John Fox Draper can a family connection be traced. The spot where Fox saw the light was a passage at the angle of Peacock Lane behind the old council house, on the side of which in later times stood the angel hostelry in the marketplace. But these things, by the way, the purit which concerns us here is that time of Tullmunt spoken of, the first half of the 17th century. Chiefly, we have to deal with the Puritans of the church who gave the new Boston its name. But first we must say a little about those dirty dissenters of the Gainsborough community who, fleeing from persecution, left their homes in the North Midland villages, attempted to escape by sea from Boston, seceded later in sailing from the North Lincolnshire coast down the Hummer and finally after their sojourn in Holland led the way out to the west and planted the germ of the new England colonies. Their leaders were William Brewster of Scrooby, the devoted elder who did so much for his brethren throughout, and William Bradford of Osterfield, the young man, afterwards Governor Bradford, and author of the valuable manuscript, History of Plymouth Plantation. These were the Pilgrim Fathers. It was in the autumn of 1607 that the Pilgrims appeared at Boston and there arranged for a passage across the North Sea. Elder Brewster proceeded them and hired a vessel in which they embarked a little below the town, probably near where Kerbeck Church stands on the North Bank with them. But the treacherous shipmaster, Dutchman, betrayed them to the officers of the port and they were promptly arrested. For be it remembered, it was a crime in the eyes of the law to immigrate without license. Hurried into open boats, they were stripped and robbed of their belongings and carried into Boston, a spectacle for the gathered crowd and then thrown into prison. They appeared to have been kindly treated by the magistrates who, as Bradford tells us, used them courteously and showed them what favor they could. And this was not surprising, for Puritan sympathy was already spreading in the town. After a month's detention during which the privy council was consulted as to the disposal of them, the majority of the prisoners were discharged and sent back to their homes. Seven of the leaders were kept in custody, including Rooster, who says the Plymouth historian of after years was chief of those that were taken at Boston and suffered the greatest loss. At last they were bound over to the Assizes. What happened to them there, we have no means of knowing. But we do know that in the autumn following, they made a second and more successful attempt and got away from the Humber in another Dutchman's ship at a point on the Lincolnshire shore above Grimsby. Even then they were surprised by armed men, and some in the confusion were left behind. But eventually all assembled at Amsterdam once they moved on to Layton, where they stayed 11 peaceful years, till the summer of 1620. When determined to form an English-speaking colony of their own, they made the historic voyage out west in the Little Mayflower. They reached Cape Cod 100 strong on November 21st, and a month later going ashore at Plymouth. So named in honor of their last place of call, the English Plymouth. Here after losing many of their number by cold, famine, and sickness, the heroic band established a settlement whose noble future they could never have dreamt of in those first days of struggle with hardships and adversity. There is much in old Boston still to remind us of the Pilgrim Fathers. First we have the ancient Guildhall, built by the Guild of St. Mary towards the close of the 15th century. Here in the basement are still to be seen two of the dark and dismal cells in which Brewster and his companions in search of freedom were confined before they were brought to the hall to be taken before the justices in the courtroom above. Reached by a winding wooden staircase, part of which remains in a trapdoor cut in the floor at the top. At other times they were presumably accommodated in the old town Gale, then standing on the marketplace, but long ago pulled down. On the walls of the upper room, with its open roof and heavy oak beams, may be read the table of Boston's mayors since 1545, when the town received its charter of incorporation. Leading from it is the quite old council chamber used after 1554, when the property of the defunct guilds was granted to the corporation by Philip and Mary, down to 1835. With its empty labeled archives hidden behind beautiful carved folding doors and a painting of Sir Joseph Banks, once recorder of Boston, hang on its Wayne Scott at walls. In the courtroom, justice continued to be administered by the borough justices and the quarter sessions till nearly the middle of the 19th century, but the fittings were not removed until 1878. There is a larger apartment in the four part of the hall, with a minstrel's gallery and a handsome Gothic window containing fragments of the original colored glass. Here in the old days were eaten the civic banquets prepared in the spacious kitchens beside the pilgrim cells and the huge open fireplaces, capacious coppers and monster spits bare mute and jiding witness to the festive prodigiality of an unreformed corporation. Leaving the guild hall, we soon reached the grammar school built 40 years before the pilgrims came to Boston, standing in the old mark yard in South End, wherein for centuries was held the great annual fair of St. Voltoff's. Behind the grammar school just across the fields is another landmark of old Boston, Hussie Tower. All that is left to the stately home of Lord Hussie, chief butler of England under Henry VIII, beheaded at Lincoln in 1537 for favoring the pilgrimage of grace. The prisoners of 1607, skirting St. John's Church, already a partial ruin, would on their way back into the town be within a stone's throw of these Hussie walls. And the old mark yard, which they passed close by must have echoed to the voices of the mob which clattered at the heels of the pilgrim fathers. Above all, over the winding river, with its lofty granaries and busy wharves, booms the great gray tower of the town's church, on which the eyes of the pilgrims doubtless rested with the admiring wonder that fills all men who gaze upon it at the present day. End of chapter one of the romantic story of the Puritan Fathers in their founding of New Boston and Massachusetts Bay Colony. Longinus on the Sublime by Cassius Longinus. 213 to 270 AD. First chapter collection six. This is a LibriVox recording, all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Longinus on the Sublime. Section one. You remember, my dear Tarantianus, that when we read over together Sicilius's Treatise on the Sublime, we thought it too mean for a subject of that nature, that it is entirely defective in its principal branches, and that consequently its advantage, which ought to be the principal aim of every writer, would prove very small to the readers. Besides, though in every treatise upon any science, two points are indispensably required. The first, that the science, which is the subject of it, be fully explained. The second, I mean in order of writing, since in excellence it is far the superior, that plain directions be given how and by what method such science may be attained. Yet Sicilius, who brings a thousand instances to show what the Sublime is, as if his readers were wholly ignorant of the matter, has omitted, as altogether unnecessary, the method which judiciously observed might enable us to raise our natural genius to any height of this Sublime. But perhaps this writer is not so much to be blamed for his omissions, as commended for his good designs and earnest endeavors. You indeed have laid your commands upon me to give you my thoughts on this Sublime. Let us then, in obedience to those commands, consider whether anything can be drawn from my private studies, for the service of those who write for the world, or speak in public. But I request you, my dear friend, to give me your opinion on whatever I advance with that exactness which is due to truth and that sincerity which is natural to yourself. For well did the sage answer the question in what do we most resemble the gods when he replied in doing good and speaking truth. But since I write, my dear friend, to you, who are versed in every branch of polite learning, there will be little occasion to use many previous words in proving that the Sublime is a certain eminence or perfection of language, and that the greatest writers, both in verse and prose, have by this alone obtained the prize of glory and filled all time with their renown. For the Sublime not only persuades, but even throws an audience into transport, the marvelous always works with more surprising force than that which barely persuades or delights. In most cases it is wholly in our own power either to resist or yield to persuasion. But the Sublime, endued with strength irresistible, strikes home and triumphs over every hearer. Dexterity of invention and good order and economy and composition are not to be discerned from one or two passages, nor scarcely sometimes from the whole texture of a discourse. But the Sublime, when seasonably addressed with the rapid force of lightning, has borne down all before it, and shone at one stroke the compacted might of genius. But these, and truths like these, so well-known and familiar to himself, I am confident, my dear Tarantianus, again undeniably proved by his own practice. End of section one of Longinus on the Sublime. Obras Escogidas by Gustavo Adolfo Becker. First chapter collection six. This is the Rebox recording. All the Rebox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit therebox.org. Obras Escogidas. Introduction. Por los tenebrosos rincones de mi cerebro, acurrucados y desnudos, duermen los extravagantes hijos de mi fantasía, esperando en silencio que el arte los vista de la palabra para poderse presentar decentes en decena del mundo. Fecunda como el hecho de amor de la miseria y parecida a esos padres que engendran más hijos de los que pueden alimentar. Mi musa concibe y pare en el misterioso santuario de la cabeza, poblando la recreación sin número, a las cuales ni mi actividad ni todos los años que me restan de vida serían suficientes a dar forma. Y aquí dentro, desnudos y deformes, revueltos y barajados en indescriptible confusión, los siento a veces agitarse y vivir con una vida oscura y extraña, semejantala de esas miriadas de gérmenes que hierven y se estremecen en una eterna incubación dentro de las entrañas de la tierra, sin encontrar fuerzas bastantes para salir a la superficie y convertirse al beso del sol en flores y frutos. Conmigo van, destinados a morir conmigo, sin que de ellos quede otro rastro que el que deja un sueño de la medianoche que a la mañana no pueda recordarse. En algunas ocasiones, y ante esta idea terrible, se subleven ellos el instinto de la vida y, agitándose en formidable, aunque silencioso tu multo, buscan en tropel por donde salir a la luz de entre las tinieblas en que viven, pero, ay, que entre el mundo de la idea y el de la forma, existe un abismo que solo puede salvar la palabra y la palabra, tímida y perezosa, se niega a secundar sus esfuerzos. Mudos, sombrillos e impotentes, después de la inútil lucha, vuelven a caer en su antiguo marasmo, tal que inertes en los surcos de las sendas, si cese el viento, las hojas amarillas que levantó el remolino. Estas ediciones de los rebeldes hijos de la imaginación explican alguna de mis fiebres. Ellas son la causa desconocida para la ciencia de mis exaltaciones y mis abatimientos. Y así, aunque mal, vengo viviendo hasta aquí, paseando por entre el indiferente multitud, esta silenciosa tempestad de mi cabeza. Así vengo viviendo, pero todas las cosas tienen un término y a estas hay que ponerles punto. El insomnio y la fatiga siguen y siguen procreando en monstruoso maldaje. Sus creaciones, apretadas ya como las raquíticas plantas de un vivero, pugnan por dilatar su fantástica existencia, disputándose los átomos de la memoria, como el escaso jugo de una tierra estéril. Necesarios abrir paso a las aguas profundas que acabarán por romper el dique y heriamente aumentadas por un manantial vivo. Andad, pues, andad y vivid con la única vida que puedo daros. Mi inteligencia os nutrirá lo suficiente para que seáis palpables. Os vestirá, aunque sea darapos, lo bastante para que no averhuense vuestra desnudez. Yo quisiera forjar para cada uno de vosotros una maravillosa estofa tejida de frases exquisitas en la que os pudierais envolver con orgullo, como en un manto de púrpura. Yo quisiera poder se insalar la forma que ha de conteneros, como se sincera el vaso de oro que ha de guardar un preciado perfume. Más es imposible. No obstante, necesito descansar. Necesito, del mismo modo que se sangra el cuerpo, por cuyas hinchadas venas se precipita la sangre completórico en puje, desahogar el cerebro, insuficiente a contener tantos absurdos. Quedad, pues, consignados aquí, como la estela nebulosa que señala el paso de un desconocido cometa, como los átomos dispersos de un mundo en embrión que venta por el aire de la muerte, antes que su creador haya podido pronunciar el fiat lux que separa la claridad de las sombras. No quiero que en mis noches sin sueño volváis a pasar por delante de mis ojos en extravagante procesión, pidiéndome con gestos y contorsiones que os saca la vida de la realidad, del limbo en que vivís, semejantes a fantasmas sin consistencia. No quiero que al romperse este arpa vieja y cascada allá se pierdan, a la vez que el instrumento, las ignoradas notas que contenía, deseo ocuparme un poco del mundo que me rodea, pudiendo, una vez vacío, apartar los ojos de este otro mundo que llevo dentro de la cabeza. El sentido común, que es la barrera de los sueños, comienza a flaquear y las gentes de diversos campos se mezclan y confunden. Me cuesta trabajo saber qué cosas he soñado y cuáles me han sucedido. Mis afectos se reparten entre fantasmas de la imaginación y personajes reales. Y memoria clasifica, revueltos, nombres y fechas de mujeres y días que han muerto o han pasado con los días y mujeres que no han existido sino en mi mente. Preciso es acabar arrojando os de la cabeza de una vez para siempre. Si morir es dormir, quiero dormir en paz en la noche de mi muerte, sin que vengáis a ser mi pesadilla, maldiciéndome por haberos condenado a la nada antes de haber nacido, y pues al mundo a cuyo contacto fuisteis engendrados y quedate en él como el eco que encontraron en un alma que pasó por la tierra, sus alegrías y sus dolores, sus esperanzas y sus luchas. Tal vez muy pronto tendré que hacer la maleta para el gran viaje. De una hora a otra, puede desligarse el espíritu de la materia para remontarse a regiones más puras. No quiero, cuando esto suceda, llevar conmigo como el avigarrado equipaje de un salting banco, el tesoro de europeles y guiñapos caído acumulando la fantasía en los desbanes del cerebro, junio de 1868. End of introducción of obres escogidas, recording by Hernan Ibarra.